Gaze into pure madness
Gaze into pure madness

…or flavored oil. After spending god knows how many hours in the brik-a-brack section at Goodwill, I no longer am able to distinguish madness from flavored oil. One is pretty much the same as the other, and I’m convinced that deep in the back rooms of World Market there’s a trio of level three projective […]

The Great Weedstack Has Spoken
The Great Weedstack Has Spoken

If you haven’t had a chance to own your own 5″x5″ section of swamp, well, now’s your chance. Fresh from the verdant green margins of the silt flow behind Harlan Manufacturing to a flower pot to Goodwill to you, it’s…one of these. The giant foam hand is for size comparison. It’s as big as that […]

Disgusting bottle-ridden things with defeated flowers
Disgusting bottle-ridden things with defeated flowers

“Things in oil” are the holiday fruitcakes of the thrift world. You can’t quite get rid of them with a clean conscience, but you definitely don’t want to ingest them. Although a proper fruitcake will stay in roughly the same state of edibility through the procession of the years. Things in oil–no, you can see their […]

Experience the flavor
Experience the flavor

Fact: After clowns, shell art, and violated dolls with no clothes and unfortunately Cyndi Lauperine hair, mysterious bottles of twigs, berries and leaves rotting in translucent oil are the biggest shelf-wasters at your local Goodwill. Normally, one can laugh them off, “peppers from the ’90s floating in brown murk, how droll,” but once in a […]

Plates and Things On Them
Plates and Things On Them

Okay, Goodwill, let’s just pause, step back a bit, and address some quality control issues, okay? Just a few…little…things. This goes beyond “make sure the Easter Bunny has a head when you sell them,” and far, far past “the box with the picture of the small personal stereo should ideally contain a small personal stereo, […]

Thank you for not smoking
Thank you for not smoking

…Hmm. Maybe I should have saved this guy for Christmas. But after all the damned bunnies, it’s good to get back to something a little more cheerful.  I like him, he works on levels. Just to start with—and I’m guessing that he somehow escaped from a headshop to wind up in a Goodwill’s crapateria, […]

Nice tall glass of ick
Nice tall glass of ick

I do like a parfait. I don’t think I’ve met anyone that doesn’t like parfaits. Until they saw this parfait, which would pretty much put anyone off of parfaits forever. That is because this is a parfait that was spurned by God and all that is good, a misbegotten example of a layered dessert. AND […]

Oh yum.
Oh yum.

It’s the latest drink in Miami, and you heard it here–“Sunrise on the Beach,” a fruity concoction of an unnatural jelly-like substance and discolored sand, redefining “drink” (and, indeed, “beach”) for the 21st Century.  Tasty! One part jello-shot, one part…uh…sand. Maybe sugar. Rim the top of the glass with it, dump it in by the […]

The Desert’s Stark Beauty
The Desert’s Stark Beauty

…Now available for $3.99. Trust me, this piece has the ENTIRE experience of southwestern life in one small, blessedly-sealed container. The sand really is that orange, the wildlife really is that stunted, and there really is a strangely rippled, mysterious wall of force that completely surrounds you, isolating you from the world and the blessed […]